iend and follower of Raphael. These
double influences determined a style that never lost its own originality.
With what delicacy and _naivete_, almost like a second Luini, but with
more of humour and sensuousness, he approached historic themes, may be
seen in his frescoes at Monte Oliveto.[404] They were executed before his
Roman visit, and show the facility of a most graceful improvisatore. One
painting representing the "Temptation of Monks by Dancing Women" carries
the melody of fluent lines and the seduction of fair girlish faces into a
region of pure poetry. These frescoes are superior to Sodoma's work in the
Farnesina. Impressed, as all artists were, by the monumental character of
Borne, and fired by Raphael's example, he tried to abandon his sketchy and
idyllic style for one of greater majesty and fulness. The delicious
freshness of his earlier manner was sacrificed; but his best efforts to
produce a grandiose composition ended in a confusion of individually
beautiful but ill-assorted motives. Like Luini, Sodoma was never
successful in pictures requiring combination and arrangement. He lacked
some sense of symmetry and sought to achieve massiveness by crowding
figures in a given space. When we compare his group of "S. Catherine
Fainting under the Stigmata" with the medley of agitated forms that make
up his picture of the same saint at Tuldo's execution, we see plainly that
he ought to have confined himself to the expression of very simple
themes.[405] The former is incomparable for its sweetness; the latter is
indistinct and wearying, in spite of many details that adorn it. Gifted
with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of the human body, Sodoma
excelled himself when he was contented with a single figure. His "S.
Sebastian," notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still the very
best that has been painted.[406] Suffering, refined and spiritual, without
contortion or spasm, could not be presented with more pathos in a form of
more surpassing loveliness. This is a truly demonic picture in the
fascination it exercises and the memory it leaves upon the mind. Part of
its unanalysable charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the
beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of martyrdom. Only
the Renaissance could have produced a hybrid so successful, because so
deeply felt.

Sodoma's influence at Siena, where he lived a picturesque life, delighting
in his horses and surrounding himself with stra